Do you ever feel like you're running on empty, saying 'yes' to everything and everyone, draining your energy reserves? Join us as we welcome our phenomenal guest, Liz Kelly, a psychotherapist and author who's made it her mission to help others navigate the maze of mental health. With over a decade's experience in the mental health field, her insights on self-care and boundary-setting are a must-hear for anyone feeling the weight of a busy life.
Together, we take a deep dive into the profound effects of self-care, and how the simple act of saying 'no' can recharge us mentally and physically. Liz shares from her wealth of knowledge on mindfulness and emotional regulation, providing practical tips on breathing and grounding exercises. We also explore the notion of being detectives of our own lives, highlighting the importance of holistic self-reflection to unveil the small changes that can drastically improve our mental health. From the basics of eating and sleeping well, to the joys of pursuing a hobby or engaging in a meaningful conversation over coffee, Liz paints a clear picture of the road to better mental health.
Grief, a complex emotion that we all grapple with, is another topic we tackle in our enlightening conversation. Liz lays bare the reality of grief, particularly during the holiday season, and shares her approach to navigating these difficult waters. We delve into the idea of moving forward with grief, not just moving on, and the importance of self-compassion during these times. By the end of our conversation, you’ll come away with valuable tools and insights to help you take charge of your mental well-being. Don't miss this life-changing episode with Liz Kelly.
You can reach her at this link.
Do you ever feel like you're running on empty, saying 'yes' to everything and everyone, draining your energy reserves? Join us as we welcome our phenomenal guest, Liz Kelly, a psychotherapist and author who's made it her mission to help others navigate the maze of mental health. With over a decade's experience in the mental health field, her insights on self-care and boundary-setting are a must-hear for anyone feeling the weight of a busy life.
Together, we take a deep dive into the profound effects of self-care, and how the simple act of saying 'no' can recharge us mentally and physically. Liz shares from her wealth of knowledge on mindfulness and emotional regulation, providing practical tips on breathing and grounding exercises. We also explore the notion of being detectives of our own lives, highlighting the importance of holistic self-reflection to unveil the small changes that can drastically improve our mental health. From the basics of eating and sleeping well, to the joys of pursuing a hobby or engaging in a meaningful conversation over coffee, Liz paints a clear picture of the road to better mental health.
Grief, a complex emotion that we all grapple with, is another topic we tackle in our enlightening conversation. Liz lays bare the reality of grief, particularly during the holiday season, and shares her approach to navigating these difficult waters. We delve into the idea of moving forward with grief, not just moving on, and the importance of self-compassion during these times. By the end of our conversation, you’ll come away with valuable tools and insights to help you take charge of your mental well-being. Don't miss this life-changing episode with Liz Kelly.
You can reach her at this link.
Hi and welcome to Finding your Way Through Therapy. The goal of this podcast is to demystify therapy, what can happen in therapy and the wide array of conversations you can have in and about therapy Through personal experiences. Guests will talk about therapy, their experiences with it and how psychology and therapy are present in many places in their lives, with lots of authenticity and a touch of humor. Here is your host, steve Bisson.
Speaker 2:It's always nice to see you, mr Annoncer, and welcome to Episode 125. If you haven't listened to Episode 124, it's me talking about first responders, a dear subject for me, and I hope that you go and listen to it. But Episode 125 will be with Liz Kelly. Liz Kelly is someone I've known through another job. We never met face to face. We've done a lot of Zooms together. We've done a lot of different things. She is very insightful, but Liz Kelly is a psychotherapist and an author and she's had 13 years of experience in the mental health field, including working in different settings with the DC Medical Examiner's Office, as well as lawyers, the WENT Center of Lawson, hearing Talkspace, medstar Rehabilitation Hospital. She's been seen on different publications and media outlets such as USA Today, bustle, dayshowcom, the Daily Beast, teen Vogue, the Wall Street Journal, cheddar News, among anything else that she's been on. You can also find her at LizKellyMSWcom and hopefully we're going to talk about different things, but most particularly, with the holidays coming, sometimes we have trouble with boundaries and setting up all those things and we feel bad about them. So I think we're going to talk about that, among other things.
Speaker 2:But here is the interview. Well, hi everyone, and welcome to episode 125 of Finding your Way Through Therapy. I'm so excited to be reconnecting with someone I worked with with a company for several years and we lost touch, not really because LinkedIn exists and all that fun stuff, but truly someone I appreciated while we were there and I didn't get a chance to really talk to her because we actually talked about it beforehand, but during COVID we had limited energy and we can definitely bring that up as the holidays approach and their lack of energy of dealing with people. And LizKelly is L-I-C-S-W, which is License, independent. What's the C again? Clinical.
Speaker 3:Social Worker.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Everyone has different ends of names, but more importantly, liz, someone is an author she's been featured on different places, including Today Show, and you'll hear that in my intro anyway but, more importantly, just a human being that I really like. That's a human being and I can't wait for you guys to get to know her. So, liz, welcome to Finding your Way Through Therapy.
Speaker 3:Thanks for having me. I've been so excited to talk with you.
Speaker 2:I can't tell you how much I'm excited because we were talking pre-interview. We used to talk with like 12 people in the room, so to speak, when we did some clinical stuff or whatever you want to call it housekeeping for the company we worked with, and I never get to connect with you. I met so many great people at that company and I'm so excited that we're going to be connecting over time because now that I also know that you're an author, I mean we have more than many things in common.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, I'm so excited about your book and I love to talk all things writing and therapy so this is going to be fun.
Speaker 2:Well, maybe you should talk a little bit more about yourself, because I feel like I know you obviously, but my audience might not know you. So tell us a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 3:Great. Well, I have been in Washington DC for probably about 22 years. So I came here after college and I thought I wanted to do something in politics or, you know, international development, and I tried all of that for a while and it was not a great fit. So I ended up going back to school to become a clinical social worker and since then I've worked in a variety of places, but most of my training's been in grief and loss counseling. I do a lot of work around bereavement, so that really informs how I work with clients. Since I work in the DC area, I work with a lot of individuals continuing with imposter syndrome, burnout, stress, anxiety, depression, so I find myself doing that a lot in session with clients, talking about those issues. And I also find that I talk a lot with clients about healthy boundaries, especially healthy boundaries at work, healthy boundaries with friends, because individuals in this area just tend to be trying to do it all and, as we know we can't do it all.
Speaker 3:We can do it all, but not all at once, and so I talk a lot with my clients about boundaries as well in session, and so right now I'm in private practice, so I have my own private practice, and I also have a book coming out in March of 2024. It's called this Book is Cheaper Than Therapy a no-nonsense guide to improving your mental health, and I'm really excited for people to read it. The reason I wrote this book is because during COVID, so many more people wanted to go to therapy, see what therapy's all about. Unfortunately, not everybody has the resources. Therapy can be really expensive. It's not inexpensive to be a therapist, so sessions, hourly sessions can be expensive, and so not everybody has the resources or the insurance benefits to go, and not everybody has the access. Some people live in really small towns where maybe there's only one psychologist or only one social worker in the town, if one at all.
Speaker 3:And so I wrote this book thinking about what are the skills that anybody could use, what are the skills that I teach practically all of my clients? And so the book covers regulating emotions. It covers what real self-care is and isn't. It covers managing grief. It covers the mind-body connection, how to regulate your nervous system. It covers relationships, what a healthy relationship looks like, and it also covers how do you find mental health resources in our system, where that's not always an easy thing to do, and I also give suggestions on what activities might offer a therapeutic benefit, even though they may not actually be traditional therapy. So that's a little bit about what the book is about, so I can't wait for people to read it.
Speaker 2:I can't wait to have you back on if you're willing to come back on, especially to talk about the book, because today really, like I've known you for a long time, we talked about a pre-interview. Can't wait to have the book and hopefully you can come on for that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would love to. I'll keep you posted.
Speaker 2:Well, one of the standard questions of finding your way through therapy besides, tell us about yourself is have you ever been in therapy? Which is the standard question for everyone. So here you go, Liz, it's on you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. I have absolutely been in therapy. I find it tremendously helpful to be able to have an hour or 50 minutes that is all about you essentially. The therapist is not your friend, it's not your family member. They don't have their own agenda. Their goal is to help you see some of your patterns. They essentially kind of hold up a mirror to what you're putting out there so you can sort through your thoughts a little bit more easily.
Speaker 3:As a therapist, I want to make sure that my style tends to be a little bit more interactive. Not all therapists are like this. A lot of therapists support and listen and offer feedback. I do that, of course, but I also am always searching for interventions and strategies that can be effective to help my clients manage stress a little bit more easily, and so I do take a pretty active approach during therapy. If a client's describing an issue and I know there's a strategy that could potentially help, I'll put it out there, and I'm very upfront with clients that they certainly don't have to take any of my suggestions. They can take what they want and throw out the rest, and the reason I do that is because I think when I was in therapy that was something I wanted more of and I didn't get that, and I wanted somebody to give me a little bit more direction, and so that's why that informs my style today.
Speaker 2:And I think that you bring up an excellent point. When you talk about a therapist, you have to make sure the match is there.
Speaker 3:And just a thought here yeah, they've actually done studies, and the number one predictor of whether therapy is going to succeed is the relationship that the therapist and the client have together. So in order for therapy to succeed, you have to vibe with your therapist.
Speaker 2:Here I was thinking it was gestalt.
Speaker 3:I know right All this time, learning these interventions and models, and it all, most of it, comes down to relationships, to the relationship.
Speaker 2:And I think what you're basically saying is something that, again, that's why I really liked your energy all the time, because you're you and for me, I think that what was also? You talk about the therapeutic relationship. I don't know what you think, but I also think that if a therapist brings themselves into the room to not just some robot that's repeating would all do respect to Mr Freud or Mr Skinner. Bring themselves into the room is also key to making a good therapeutic relationship.
Speaker 3:Right. I completely agree. I even said that to a client recently was about how therapists are human, and I don't hide the fact that I'm human. I am always acutely aware that the therapy session is not about me, it's about the client and I am there to serve the client. But I don't hide the fact that I'm human and when it's appropriate I do share.
Speaker 2:I agree, I always. You know my clients sometimes ask me how you're doing. I answer the question, I don't say good, right.
Speaker 3:If.
Speaker 2:I'm not having a good day. You know I shared with you before we started the interview that I've had a lot of sinusitis recently. My head's about to explode and people would ask me how you're doing. I feel my head's going to explode. People are like well, why would you say that to a client? Well then, that gives them permission to be themselves too.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, that may absolutely so. Yeah, if they get the sense that they have to be fine for us all the time or if they have to, kind of. You know, I think sometimes I have clients who come in and they think like they have to get an A in therapy and they have to.
Speaker 3:I'm like no, that's not what it's all about. You could just come in and be whoever you are. You don't have to be engaging, you don't have to be entertaining, you don't have to be nice, you don't have to be fun. You can just be whatever you are, and I am here for it and I'm not going to judge them for it.
Speaker 2:And I think that's the other part too is that a lot of us, you know, learn the non-judgmental stance and you know we talk about that. But when we practice it, for me it's like people expecting me to respond to maybe a you know, severe grief, severe trauma, severe depression, whatever. And sometimes I will give them the response because I think that's the feeling that I get from them wanting that. But sometimes I'm like, oh, you're not surprised, I'm like you're being you. You know, I've had you know how many times and I don't know if that's your experience, but I've had a lot of passive suicidality, which means basically thinking about not living anymore but not really having a plan. And people are like I was scared to tell you and I'm like, why would you be scared to tell me? This is exactly the place to talk about it.
Speaker 3:Right, exactly.
Speaker 2:And I. You need to be able to be those mirrors for them and let them be them.
Speaker 3:Right, and that's something I try to act I ask about early on because I want clients to know that you don't have to be afraid to break those things. You know that if you are having thoughts about not being in here anymore, not not wanting to wake up in the morning, like that's, that's okay to talk about.
Speaker 2:And I think that that's a little bit of what we need to be able to do with all our clients.
Speaker 3:For sure, absolutely.
Speaker 2:When you, when you're the other part. I've made me laugh. I was thinking about you having a therapist. I remember my client saying to me that I want to find who your therapist is, therapist is, and so on and so forth, and I want to be the king of therapy.
Speaker 3:Find the king therapist or the queen therapist of them all.
Speaker 2:I said I'll give you a spoiler. It's probably a big old circle.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, no kidding, right. Yeah, it's not a hierarchy, it's a circle, right.
Speaker 2:And that humanizes us a little bit. But you know we're, we're, we're at the beginning of November. We're recording on a different time, obviously, but this will be released at the beginning of November and a lot of people are going through, you know, their holidays, you know you brought up something that I really appreciate is boundaries, and in the holidays I think that we forget that. You know we need to. You know we feel like we got to please this family, that family, the neighbor, the other friend, that this and that. How do we set up boundaries with people? Because you're talking about how important that was to your work. So let's hear a little more about that.
Speaker 3:Right. So I love talking about boundaries because oftentimes stress, anxiety, depression, you know these can have a wide range of causes, absolutely, but sometimes these things can occur because of a lack of boundaries.
Speaker 3:And so, you know, during especially during the holiday season, I think it's you really want to pay attention to those feelings of frustration or irritability or anger. When you get those feelings, those are messengers. Those feelings are trying to tell you something, and usually those feelings are trying, are trying to tell you that there needs to be a better boundary in place, as you know. For example, let's say, you know, I'm irritable because I didn't sleep. I stayed up late, too late, last night watching YouTube videos and I didn't sleep. And so now today I'm irritable and I'm like tired and frustrated. So that feeling could be telling me that I need better boundaries with myself, and so and one of the boundaries could be eight hours of sleep is not negotiable that I need to prioritize my bedtime, I need to have a wind down routine.
Speaker 3:I need to charge my phone in another room at night, so I'm not tempted to scrolls and use an old school alarm clock to wake up. So those feelings could be pointing me in the direction of a boundary that I might need to have with myself.
Speaker 2:But I'm with you 100%. One of the things I tell people about sleep is other than if I'm at a hotel or somewhere like that, my phone is on a complete different floor than I am when I sleep. So people sometimes what if I call you and you're asleep and they know where I won't hear it?
Speaker 3:Exactly, yeah, and I think some people try to put their phone on like do not disturb or on silent. But just having it there, you know, keeps your brain activated, because your brain's still thinking am I going to get a message? Did anybody call me? Do you know what's?
Speaker 1:on YouTube. Why are you know?
Speaker 3:your brain's wondering all those things just because your phone is right there and so I. That's one thing I tell particularly all of my clients is charge your phone in another room at night if you can, because it really does help a lot.
Speaker 2:A $10 alarm is worth the price for some people and I've told them. I said if you're really struggling for the $10, I'll get it for you, Right? Old school alarm really works a lot better than your phone, because what's the first thing you do? You stop the alarm and then you look at how many notifications you got.
Speaker 3:Exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you need to do that.
Speaker 3:Right. So that's, like you know, one example of having a boundary with yourself. You know, during the holiday season, if you find yourself really irritated that you have to bake a dozen cookies for your community bake sale or exchange, that might be a signal to yourself like, okay, maybe I need to say no to request more often, or I need to. I often talk to my clients saying you know, this is one way to kind of get started on setting boundaries is is to practice the pause that anytime you get a request from someone whether it's at work or your friends or your family, your spouse or wherever if, if at all possible, if you can say let me check on that and I'll get back to you, just even if you think you're 99% sure you're going to say yes, if you can just give yourself that pause so that you can look at your schedule, look at your capacity, so you have a chance to reflect. Is this something I can truly do? Can I do this willingly?
Speaker 1:Can I do?
Speaker 3:I have the time, energy and desire to do this thing that I'm. That's being asked of me, and if yes, then go for it. You know, say yes, but if, but. If no, then there's nothing wrong with saying no. And and saying no, you know, setting boundaries is all about preventing resentment right, and if you say no to this request, that's going to save you from feeling resentment later on and that's going to help preserve that relationship. Because what you don't want to happen you don't want to bake these 12 cookies and you go to this community gathering. All of a sudden you're grumpy, you don't want to be there, it's not fun, you're, you know you're not connecting like you want that to be a joyous thing, and so if saying no is going to help preserve this relationship and this connection, then it's worth it.
Speaker 2:I agree Maybe.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you there, but another thought on saying no is that it's not so much saying no, but it's allowing yourself to say yes to things that are more in line with your values.
Speaker 2:And I would also argue that sometimes you got to be respectful of your own time. You know one of the things that happens in the holidays we want to do 14 things for different people. But you know, sometimes you run out of energy, sometimes you're tired, sometimes maybe you had too much turkey. Whatever the case may be, Right.
Speaker 2:And I always tell people like showing up half ass is worse than saying no and still preserving kind of like that relationship. They'll be angry for a second. If they're friends or they're people who care for you, they'll understand.
Speaker 3:Right, and I don't know about you, but I used to think that, like my time, my energy, my resources were just unlimited and I could give them out freely to anybody and there would always be more time and more energy. But I've come to learn that that is not true. Your time and your energy and your money and your resources that is a finite amount and I need to be a warrior and guard those things with my life, because it is my life right.
Speaker 2:Right, and no one's going to take care of you but you. I think that that's part of what I remind people too. Recently, my ex-wife had diagnosed with COVID on the weekend that she should have had the kids, and I had about seven different things planned, so I canceled about three of them and I said, look, I can't do it, I won't have the energy. And this is just a change of plans. And a couple of people that I canceled with are also therapists. They happen to be therapists and we call each other mental men. You can go check out episode 118 if you want to know what I mean. But they privately emailed me afterwards and said you know what that took courage, probably, for you to say no because you wanted to play golf but you couldn't, and so I think that sometimes people will actually be much more respectful than you think they're going to be.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, that they'll understand. And even if they don't understand, that's OK. You know, not every. I know we all have this sort of innate desire to be liked and to be, to belong and to be accepted. I mean, that goes back to caveman days, right? Because the people that were accepted had a much greater chance of survival. So it's like in us, it's wired in us, to want to belong and to want to be accepted and to want to be liked. But we, in our modern world, we need to get over that just a little bit. Because in order to take care of ourselves, and setting boundaries is definitely not about punishing other people, it's not about controlling other people, it's not about teaching other people a lesson, it's boundaries are not about other people at all. Bodies are just are about doing what we need to do to protect your, your time and your energy and your resources.
Speaker 2:And then I go back to and I like to get to these Instagram posts sometimes because I think they can be very revealing. I'd rather you dislike me for who I am than like me for who I'm not. And I'm OK with you not liking me for who I am If I oh no. And let's say, for example, like you know, we really get along. Liz, it's so great to see you.
Speaker 2:First of all, I look fake you can look at the video when I was pretending here. And number two, that just blows my mind. I'm like now I got to play this game. I'd rather be honest and tell people not and that you don't need to be cruel. You can be honest without cruelty, as Brene Brown would say. But at the end of the day, for me it's something like you got to be who you are and sometimes like if I couldn't do this interview today, even if I'm under the weather, I would have been like Liz, I'm so sorry I can't do it. We'll figure it out. I make it work on your schedule and if people can't get that, that's not something I really am attached to, because that means they didn't really respect me.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, I think Brene also said something to the effect of we should care what some people think, but we shouldn't care what everyone thinks. Like you know, the people that we need to care about are the ones that care about us. They're the ones that want the best for us, they're the ones that know us, they're the ones that love us. Like those are the people we should care about, their opinions and their thoughts. Those are the people we should care about. We should care what they think, but we shouldn't think about what everybody we couldn't. We shouldn't care what everybody thinks.
Speaker 2:I know that everyone's going to like my podcast and I'm fully aware of that and that's okay. I didn't make it for everyone. I made it so that if if someone listens to this and like, oh my God, this boundary revelation was so good, oh, what book did Brene Brown talk about this? And the gift of imperfection? Brave, the wilderness, all good books, all of our books, are pretty good At the end of the day, if it helps one person. I don't care if I have a million people listening, but I'd be nice. I will admit that I'd rather have five people that listen and get the message, versus million people going. Wow, steve really says the right things, but they're not really caring for me, they just whatever.
Speaker 3:So right, you know.
Speaker 2:I think that you talk about a little bit of the holidays and the setting the boundaries. I think that it comes back to a little bit about, you know, self-esteem, and sometimes that's misinterpreted as self-compassion, and sometimes there's a difference between the two, but not everyone knows the difference.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah. So a lot of my clients and myself included we were raised with this idea that we need to shoot for high self-esteem. We need to achieve high self-esteem. The problem with high self-esteem is that self-esteem usually is about external factors. So how do we stack up against other people? Did we get that promotion? Did we achieve that goal? Did we get that degree? Did we do this? It's about achievement, it's about productivity, it's about how we stack up against other people, and our worth isn't tied to our productivity.
Speaker 3:That's not we're worthy just because we're human, right, that's another thing that Renee Brown says a lot is that you know where our worth is not is because we exist, because we're human, and so self-esteem is tough, because self-esteem is kind of a roller coaster, like it's going to rise and fall based on what's going on in your external world and your environment. Where self-compassion? So Dr Kristin Neff she's the one who really has done a ton of research on this. I highly recommend you search her articles and read her books about self-compassion, because she's incredible. But she writes that self-compassion is more about the relationship we have with ourselves, and I look at self-compassion as treating yourself like you would treat a cherished friend right, because oftentimes we are so much harder on ourselves than we would be a friend.
Speaker 3:We would say things to ourselves that we would never in a million years say to our friend, and so I love self-compassion is because self-compassion is there for you on the highest of highs. If you achieve a goal, that's amazing. Self-compassion is there for you on the highest of highs, but self-compassion is also going to be there for you on your lowest of lows, on the hardest days that you have. So self-compassion is more sustainable than I feel that self-compassion is more sustainable than self-esteem.
Speaker 2:Well, I think we need the message more often, though, right? I mean, how many of us? The self-compassion thing is well. Why don't you care more for others, so to speak?
Speaker 3:Right, and I think people worry sometimes that self-compassion is going to lead to laziness or being too easy on yourself or being self-indulgent. But I think that people will find that when they start to practice self-compassion it doesn't go that direction Right. When you treat yourself with kindness, not only are you kinder here yourself, but you also end up being kinder to others and more understanding towards others as well.
Speaker 2:So you're basically saying no is a compassionate statement.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I can be, absolutely no can be a compassionate statement.
Speaker 2:I like the thing I tell people that saying no is a compassionate statement for yourself and others, because if I'm again, I come back to the interview. If I was here against my will or not wanting to talk to you or what have you, then not only my compassion would show that I don't care to be here.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:And then it would also like afterwards I'd be done like I'd done. I'd just press stop or press stop and go. That was a shitty interview, I did a bad job, and then suddenly it just goes after my self-esteem again. So it's good to say no. I say no is a good, compassionate statement.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and if you think about it from my perspective, if I said yes to this interview out of obligation, like, oh, I have to do this, I don't want to, let's see down, I don't really have time, but I'm going to say yes anyway, I don't think we're having this much fun, and then I don't think that it would be the same, and so so, absolutely In that case, it would have been more compassionate for me to say no.
Speaker 2:Exactly and that's why, like I do this, most people after 120, what? 25, whatever it is number of episodes, they know I don't script. I have questions from my client for people I talk to, but I don't have a script because I think scripts just absolutely terrify people and it also takes the mechanical. You know. I'll just go back to. Let's say, can you give me a tool that would be very beneficial to others? It's going to clearly show that I have zero compassion or zero passion about what I do and that's why, most of my most, I can't think of one episode that wasn't kind of like off the cuff, just talking to someone and going for where we go.
Speaker 3:Yeah, now, I completely agree and I love too that you're being true to yourself, that you're being authentic and you recognize that like having a script and having to plan that might work for other people and that might work for another person's style, but that's not you and you got to be true to what works for you.
Speaker 2:And I think it also helps my own mental health, because if I was sitting here going I gotta go through these five questions for Liz, I would be down. That's not good for me. I'm not very good at that and for some people that's very important and good for them and that's fine. That's their world and I'm not opposed to that. But for me, I know, it just would be like ugh. Liz really wants me to talk about Gatorade. What the hell is this?
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I'm just saying that, for example, cause she didn't ask me to plug Gatorade. We make no money off of this, but you can call us if you want to give us some money, but at the end of the day it's really being able to do that. And, you know, kind of brings me to my other question that I would like to ask you in regards to that, because once we start doing things, you know, and we feel a little down on ourself and we keep on going down these hills that are just not good. You know, when people feel like their mental health is not where it should be, what could they do to kind of like explore the possibilities of what they should do next?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a great question, and I often talked with my clients about my job, and our job together is that of a detective. We have to be a detective and we have to do a deep dive into their life. So I tend to I take a really holistic approach when it comes to therapy. I talk to my clients about their when they go to bed. When they wake up, what does their daily routine look like? When are they eating? What do they eat? Are they moving their bodies? Do they have social outlets? Do they have hobbies? What's the relationship with their family like? What's their sense of spirituality, like?
Speaker 3:We talk about all of those things because there are so many different ways to tweak things in your life that might make a huge difference in your mental health. You might be feeling anxious because you forget to eat during the day and your blood sugar is all over the place and you're hungry. You know you might have an unmet physical need, so you know that might be you might be drinking too much caffeine, or so we have to really do a deep dive and take a look at what your life looks like so that we can figure out what areas to change, and typically the changes are pretty small. They could be just a tweak here or there. It could be. You know, I'm not gonna charge my phone in my room at night anymore so I can get better sleep. It could be. I'm gonna make sure that I meet up with a friend once a week. I'm gonna start a hobby so I have a creative outlet. So my whole world isn't my job and there's so many different things that people can do, and you don't necessarily.
Speaker 3:I'm a huge fan of therapy and if you have the means and the access to go to therapy, do it. You know it's never a bad idea. But you can also perform the same assessment on yourself, like you can take a hard look at your life and see, like, okay, what things have worked in the past. You know when I've been feeling good, what was I doing. Then you know what things have worked before, what tweaks can I make now? That would really make a big difference. And so you don't have to be in therapy to perform that same reflection or that same assessment on yourself.
Speaker 2:Well, there's a few things I got to comment on. First of all, there's no such thing as too much caffeine Okay, I'm kidding, that's just for me, but more importantly A caffeine lover too.
Speaker 2:Oh, you know, like I tell people all around, like, what do you want to do to make me happy? Bring me a $2 decent cup of coffee and a good conversation, and that's the best mental health treatment that you can give me. It doesn't have to be a $27 mocha latte, pumpkin spice with cinnamon bonn and whatever, I don't care about any of that. For me, a cup of coffee, a good conversation, that's better than sometimes my own therapist. Sorry, joe, but at the end of the day, I think it's being able to find those things that work for you, and that does have to be therapy. My clients resource themselves with walks in nature, right, you know, as fall ends. You know, I don't know, but you know, up here in the Northeast we all have those leaf papers that come up and look at all the colors. I think that that's a good way to do mental health therapy to yourself too.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know mindfulness has been buzzword for a while. People talk a lot about mindfulness and how good it is to practice mindfulness. And you know all that mindfulness is is basically being in touch with the present moment and using all of your senses and being engaged with the present moment. And you don't need anything fancy to do that. That could be a walk in nature, that could be letting yourself listen to a song completely and putting your full focus on that song. You know you can mindfully watch the dishes, you can mindfully make dinner.
Speaker 3:Anything can be a mindfulness activity. And you know, I find that, like when my clients have a sense of flow, when they're doing something where they kind of lose themselves, whether it's like art or soccer or any of those things like that's a mindfulness activity and that's why it feels so good is because they're in the moment. And the reason that mindfulness is so good is because when you're in the present moment, you're not ruminating on things that have happened in the past and you're also not worried about things that haven't happened yet, and because and the present moment is all that we really have control over so the more you can kind of orient yourself back to the present moment and what is within your control. I think you can find that that'll really boost your mood.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, that's a great point and I think that mindfulness doesn't. You know, people make it a lot more than it should be. Just like when I say to people relaxation techniques, they get a deep breath, holding it for two seconds, letting go. There you go. You did a relaxation technique, took you all of six seconds. Do you have any suggestions in regards to some mindfulness or some like stuff like that that people can do? Maybe? You know they're a stressful family holiday gap to get together. I will not name anything but thanksgiving. At the end of the day, how can we learn how to like? For me, I've learned that sometimes I'm Canadian, so my mind is gone now, for Thanksgiving has already passed, but for you know, thanksgiving that's coming up Sometimes I'll just go. Hey, you know what? I gotta go to the bathroom. I don't need to go to the bathroom, I just walk outside and take a walk around the house or something, take in some fresh air and hopefully I don't slip, because in the North East it's sometimes slippery around Thanksgiving.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:And then come back in with a fresh start.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a great example. Going and taking a quick walk can be a mindfulness activity, some really quick ones. I love the four, seven, eight breathing. So you breathe in for four counts, hold for seven counts and breathe out for eight counts and then you repeat as needed that can. If you're having trouble falling asleep, that can help you with sleep. It can help you if you're having feelings stressed at work, because breathing will help bring your heart rate down, it'll slow your respiration, it'll increase your blood flow, it brings your blood pressure down and basically, when you breathe and you consciously slow down your breathing, you're sending a signal to your brain that I'm calm, I'm not in danger, I'm okay. And that helps you think more clearly. Because when your brain gets into survival mode, that panicky survival mode, your prefrontal cortex, the thinking part of your brain, basically just goes offline, it goes and takes a vacation and your survival part of your brain, the amygdala, is taken over. So basically, breathing that's a really long way to say that breathing makes you feel calmer because it helps bring the thinking part of your brain and creative problem solving part of your brain back online. So breathing techniques are great.
Speaker 3:Grounding techniques can be really helpful too, and a grounding technique is basically a brain hack to bring you back into the present moment. That's how I define it. So my favorite one is to name five things that you see, four things that you feel, three things that you hear, two things that you smell and one thing that you taste. And if you mess up the counting it doesn't really matter, it's just doing the exercise naming things that you feel that you see. That brings you back to the present moment, gets you back in touch with your senses and gets you out of your head. So, and that can be just enough to sort of be like okay, let me figure out what to do.
Speaker 2:Right, I'm a big fan. I never did it that way. That's the one that I'm gonna steal from you. Thanks, Liz.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no problem.
Speaker 2:The one I typically use is find three things that are blue in your room, find four things that are red, find two things that are white, find four things that are black, and it just resets your brain, because, you know, I actually looked it up on a neurological standpoint. Basically, it goes into a part of your brain that's not compatible with emotions.
Speaker 3:Okay, that's really cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so basically, if I ask you to look for something that's blue, you're not attached to the color blue. You're not attached, you're just attached to finding it Right, and so it takes you away from that emotional state, and that's why it helps calm.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it's a little distance between you and that, that emotion. Yeah, so if you're stressed around the holidays. And grounding exercises. If you go online and you know search grounding exercises you can find a ton of different options breathing exercises. I also encourage my clients to practice breathing and grounding exercises when they're not stressed out, because that way, when you're at the family event and your rando uncle says something off-color or you know, and you get really heated you know you want to be able to know what to do right away, and the only way to do that is to practice these breathing exercises and these grounding exercises Even when you're not stressed.
Speaker 3:Just so you got them in your back pocket.
Speaker 2:I'm a big fan of Buddhism. I Consider myself a practitioner. They call it a practice for a reason, for Buddhism. And I kind of remind people that you know what, in the mode, if you're unhappy at the table, for example, or someone says something off-color and you say, uncle, when people might say that's, that's sexist. But hey, let's face it, we all have an uncle like that, you know. I remind myself that this is just a moment, it will pass and I don't need to be attached to it. And the detachment part not in the like this is an association way, but detaching myself from it, that eventually Some other moment will take over, is a good way to kind of like move me away from the Uncle's statement.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I actually have in my book some strategies for Emotional regulation and and when you do notice an emotion or find yourself feeling something intense, I suggest that you first you try to name it right, like what?
Speaker 1:is it that?
Speaker 3:you're feeling in a, name it to the tame it, dr Daniel Segal, I think he's pretty famous for for saying that phrase. Name it to tape it. So name what you're feeling. And I like just to say, like I noticed that I'm having the feeling of, because that, put again, puts a little distance between myself and the emotion. So, like I noticed myself having feelings of sadness, and that way you don't become the emotion, like, instead of I'm sad, I noticed myself having feelings of sadness. And then I typically will add and that's okay at the end, because sometimes we'll judge ourselves for having a certain emotion, right, like I'm feeling sad, oh, I shouldn't feel sad because I've got so many good things going for me, and then all of a sudden we feel worse and then we still sad and guilty, and you know, and that's no good. So so let yourself name, name the emotion, let yourself feel it without any judgment, and then get curious like, okay, what contributed to me feeling this way, right, um, am I hungry, am I tired? Am I hungover?
Speaker 3:You know is there and you know, am I? You know what's going on? No, do I not feel good? So notice what's going on. Is there an unmet physical need? Also, is this situation Challenging a value that you have like? Is there a value that you hold dear and this situation is challenging that like?
Speaker 3:for example, if I feel, have this belief that, like I, need to be efficient as possible and you have somebody in a work meeting, that's drowning on and on about some off-topic thing and you're like there should have been done 10 minutes ago, like that's like this guy or the situation is challenging a value that you have and that's maybe why it's so intense, you know. The next thing is that you know to definitely breathe right, like you know knowledge, what's happening, and breathe ground yourself so that you can. And then at that point you know, once you've brought down the emotional intensity, then you can, then, only then, you can, problem solve. I think sometimes people try to problem solve in the midst of like a heated moment. But you got to like bring down the emotional reactivity first and then problem solve. Because Because you're bright, you know, because if you're amygdala, that like Survival part of your brain is taken over, that you you're not gonna problem solve effectively. So bring down the emotional reactivity, then figure out how to how to solve your problem.
Speaker 2:I think I learned sorry.
Speaker 3:There's a big that was a really long explanation about emotional regulation.
Speaker 2:Liz, if I ever find that you're going too long, no worry, I'll stop you. I don't have a.
Speaker 3:I forgot. I'm dealing with Steve. You're, you're honest, you're gonna tell me so if I drawn on too long.
Speaker 2:You know I, when you were talking about that, I remember and you know this is another point I want to make very quickly. I've done this many times on my podcast. I'm gonna say you don't need a diploma to teach people a whole lot. It's nice to have the poem, isn't all that. But that's not a value of who I am or who Liz is. One of my, when I worked in a supermarket, one of my managers high school diploma, not picking on him, just that's the truth.
Speaker 2:I was working on doing a display when I worked in a supermarket and I was getting frustrated, couldn't cut the box or I couldn't make it look good, I was getting frustrated. He looked at me, says walk away. I'm like no, no, no, finish this. He's like no, go have a breakfast. He's like. And he's like go away. And I'm like no, no.
Speaker 2:And I was a stubborn still am, I guess and I said no, leave me alone. He's like no, fucked off, go get breakfast, take us. And then I used to smoke cigarettes, have a cigarette and come back. Okay, I was so frustrated with him. I go and eat, renee, you trouble me nuts and screw him. I go have a cigarette and I come back and look at the display. It took me about five seconds to fix it and he's like yes, there's always a fast solution to your problem. Well, probably not the best solutions. You take some distance, you give it time, you're gonna come to a better solution, and I never forgot that lesson. And and something to keep in mind when we want to solve Conflict with others. Sometimes, letting the conflict be and thinking about it from a different point of view, it's probably the healthiest thing you can do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that actually made me think of something that comes up in topic with or in session with a lot of my clients is I work with a lot of really high functioning Executives that you know they manage an incredible amount of tasks during a day. They're so good at what they do and and. But sometimes what happens is that when they have this instinct that they need to speed up and do more, that might be an instinct that you need to actually do the opposite. Because, see, when your body is telling you like I gotta do more, I gotta finish this, I gotta figure this out, they're like that might be an instinct where it's like, no, I need to step away for five minutes, I need to breathe, I need to get a drink of water, I need to go outside for a minute, I need to step away from technology and then I can come back. So when your body, sometimes when your body and brain are telling you to speed up, that's actually your signal to slow down a little bit.
Speaker 2:And I've seen that also when we talk about holidays, you know, for example, for those of for many of my clients, there's always loss that comes up during the holidays grief, the process that goes with that, and like, no, we got to talk about losing my father or losing my grandmother or my whatever family member or friend. Let's bring you up right away so I can rip the band-aid off. No, how about you? Just let it be organic and you know, it kind of brings up the whole point of the grief. You know how do we deal with grief, particularly with any time.
Speaker 2:Frankly, I think grief is something that we tend to forget. We're all grieving something right now. Frankly, I think that the stat is one out of four of us is a 50%. I'm sorry, 50% is grieving someone something right now. So every two people you meet are grieving something. I Would argue that we're all grieving something. I might have lost my friend when I was 12 years old, but at 48. I'm still grieving his loss. How do we bring up a little bit of the grief process to our Clients and also maybe thinking about the holidays coming up and how we can deal with that?
Speaker 3:right, that's a good point. David Kessler says that grief he's a Grief expert and he says that grief lasts as long as love lasts. So you know when. Sometimes when people ask him you know how long am I gonna be grieving for, how long is my family member gonna be grieving for X, y or Z? He's gonna say, well, how long is that person gonna be dead. You know there, we're gonna If our love doesn't go away. So grief is not gonna go away.
Speaker 3:But but hopefully over time the grief will change so it becomes easier to carry, so that it doesn't feel so heavy, it doesn't take so much energy to To carry with us, and so that's the goal over time is for for the grief to be easier, become easier to carry. So, yeah, grief and the and the holidays, or grief in general, anytime you have changed and lost, you're gonna have, you're likely gonna have grief, and that could even be after a good change. So if you move to a house or you have a baby or you get a new job, there could still be grief that comes along with those, with those life changes, and and sometimes In my work with clients I don't think they realize that they're grieving. For example, I absolutely.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I have a lot of People that are new in their career. Maybe they moved to Washington DC after college and they're excited about their new life in DC. They're excited about their job, they're excited about a lot of things, but they're also grieving the fact that they're no longer a college student. They're no longer surrounded by, you know, thousands of people their own age. They're no longer in a situation where it's incredibly easy to have social outlets and that's really hard, and so being able to name what's happening can be really helpful. Like this is grief and grief. I was like to let my clients know that grief isn't one emotion. Grief is a roller coaster of emotions. It's regret, sadness, irritability, anger, disappointment, so it could be a host of emotions, and so and grief Changes day-to-day. Sometimes you're gonna feel like I got this, I'm doing great, and then the next day you're, you know, feeling like things are falling apart, and that's just. That's part of grief.
Speaker 2:I Think you know the my have a good friend, gina Mofo, wrote a book of About grief and I really enjoyed it. She was on my podcast a few episodes ago and she says if you ever figure it out, you're better than me. And she wrote about it a very good book that I highly recommend to. Moving on doesn't mean letting go and and I really like the fact that you know, if you think that grief is something that you can get over, I got like alright, well, you better explain to me how you get over the loss of someone you love, because I haven't figured it out yet.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, nora McCurney she's a author who writes so about grief, and one of the things she said is it's not moving on, it's moving forward, and I really love that, that idea that you're not moving on from the loss, you're moving forward with it, and and I just that makes a lot of sense to me. I.
Speaker 2:I remind people I'd around the holidays and we're gonna want Uncle John next to us.
Speaker 3:Right because.
Speaker 2:Uncle John was like the life of the party, was the funniest guy you ever knew. And Johnny Johnny's not there anymore and you know you can miss him and maybe you don't cry because you miss him. It's just you miss him. Or you remember one of those most inappropriate jokes that he said at the wrong time and really offended Anti Karen, for example. I'm just making up names as I go here, but the point is is that it's their presence doesn't go away. The grief doesn't go away. I always remind people that the famous quote is we are someone until everyone forgets our name, and that grief, whether you like it or not, sometimes perpetuates the existence of those individuals, and that's not the worst thing in the world.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, and I think the reason why grief is so prevalent around the holidays is that there's so many, there's so many one, there's so many expectations. There's kind of this expectations that we should be joyful, that we should be in the celebratory mood that we should have, you know, tons of beautifully wrapped presents and at a perfect family and all these things, and so the holidays can really highlight. When that's not the case, when something's missing, a person's missing, when we there is a job loss, where we don't fit that pitch, picture, perfect image that we see on TV or in social media, and and I think you bring it back to like self-compassion.
Speaker 3:I think that's where self-compassion can come in because you would never tell your friend like, oh well, you just need to work harder so you have that picture perfect holiday celebration. You know, put up those garlands, even though you don't feel like a like you'd never tell a friend that, but we'll tell that to ourselves, right and so.
Speaker 3:So if you can start to check in with yourself, especially around the holidays, and be like, okay, what would I tell my friend who's feeling this way, and chances are the answer is gonna be something that's actually gonna help. You know that. The answer you might tell a friend like, hey, go easy on yourself, just do what you feel or do what you know.
Speaker 3:It's okay to adapt traditions if you're not up. You don't have to send some holiday cards this year if you are not up for it, so you know. So treat yourself like a friend, especially during the holiday season. I.
Speaker 2:Can't agree more than that. I mean, I kind of remind people that my view is I. The analogy I talk about, grief and trauma is this big old mountain in the middle of your life and you know we circle it because we don't want to deal with it. That's just how we some, most people deal with it and some people will take it on head-on because they're gonna solve this mountain. Well, I don't know if you've ever done some hiking, but if you get to the top of the mountain, that's only halfway, because getting down sometimes can be worse. And if you don't have hamstring problems, good for you. But going downhill can be worse than going uphill and Grief is just that. And once you get to the other side, the mountain doesn't evaporate and you don't turn around and it's gone. The grief still there, but you got through it, you didn't get over it.
Speaker 2:And it's another analogy that I like to use for grief and the holidays, because I will miss. You know, we saw when, when I celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving, my dad was huge on that. And you know, every Thanksgiving that I have in Canada, which I do every year, I always think about my dad. I don't go well, he's behind me, he doesn't exist anymore. No, he's still present and I did. I got through it, but I'm not over him at all. I still love my dad. I still miss him.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so just another way to kind of like talk about the grief around the holidays and it's okay. And if you feel like crying and you know what I'm doing in front of people, go ahead, go, go, go in the bathroom, go for that walk, go for that self-compassion stuff, go for that Mindfulness moment. Whatever the case may be, just be yourself. I mean if if someone tells you they've never been through grief, they've never lived, basically, Right, yeah, grief is is a price for love, right, it's the flip side of.
Speaker 3:It's the flip side of love. If we're gonna love something, we're gonna experience in grief because we're gonna experience loss.
Speaker 2:Right, I think that that you know the, the, you know. I explain sometimes too, that even people you hated, you'll grieve them, because the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, that's such a good point.
Speaker 2:Right, even if someone I hated right. You know, if tom losses jerry and I know I'm old so I don't know the equivalent Nowadays but you know, if tom losses jerry, from the old cartoons Tom would be sad or jerry would be sad, because they don't have that antagonist across.
Speaker 3:They wouldn't know who they are, or or be harder to know who, how they fit in the world.
Speaker 2:So grief is not always about thinking about only the people we love, even the people we Learn to not like so much. You know, I talk about the old company that we worked at and there's still a grief process that still occurs to this day about that company and right now that I want to go back by any stretch. But at the same time there is a grief process. I miss seeing Liz. I this, you know. Yeah, I'm not a fake guy. It was always great to talk to to to Liz because she always had great, insightful advice. But then I'm like, oh, I don't get to see her anymore. Now I get to see you on a podcast and get to spend an hour with you.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But yeah, we had to find that, new ways to reconnect, and that was a process and and that wasn't, wasn't easy. And and I think you bring up a good point too, that with loss, uh, there's like, but sometimes the primary, primary loss, which might be like the loss of the job or the loss of a person, but sometimes what causes just as much, or if not more, distress are the secondary losses, which is, you know, for example, you know you brought up that company that we, that we worked for and I really enjoyed my time there and I'm grieving the loss of the imagined future that I had with that company, because I sort of thought like in my head, like, oh, it's going to go this way and it's, this is going to happen, it's good.
Speaker 3:And I'm going to be with these people and I'm so excited and it didn't turn out that way and so I'm grieving this loss of an imagined future that I, that I had and I think that happens A lot is that when you know, especially around the holidays, we're kind of we're grieving, you know, not just the primary loss of maybe a person or a job or, but the secondary losses, like the, like the, you know, loss of income or loss of a church, community or whatever that is, and those can be just as hard, if not harder.
Speaker 2:I mean, I, I, I talk about, we talk about this old company that we worked for. What I looked the most forward to, besides the group, like kind of like supervision, whatever we called it that week, I really can't remember. You know, every year there would be a gathering, whether it was in New York City or whatever, and then I got to see people I only knew virtually, and that was always a great thing to look forward to. And when I started talking with Liz, I'm like, oh, I'm going to meet her one day. And here we are we still haven't physically met, we obviously know each other, but we've never met, and there's a loss there that comes from that too, for me, personally.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I agree, I had this thought like, oh, I'm going to meet all of these people in person one day, and at New York City, and and it didn't end up happening. And so, you know, I'm hopeful that maybe we can make it happen on our own, but it's but it's not going to happen in the way that I anticipated and there's, and that absolutely Causes grief.
Speaker 2:One day. I know we're going to meet and I know that for a fact and just make it more exciting to see each other. Yeah, absolutely, you know I'm. I'm looking forward to Having you back on. I said that at the beginning of the podcast and as we approach the hour already this is how fast it goes. I really am looking forward to having you back, if you're willing to come back for the podcast.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would love to come back. I'd love to talk about the book or any topic. See, you have it on at the top of your mind. I'm happy to chat with you.
Speaker 2:I'll say the same thing to anyone who writes a book that I know as long as you Uh, when I see you, you sign it for me and uh grab dinner or whatever, um, you know, whether it is in Washington and new york, boston, where mostly my stuff is, it, it'll just be nice, because it sometimes it's just meeting the people that you truly like that makes it worthwhile. And uh want to make sure. I said that because, Not trying to force you to have dinner with me, I'm not doing that at all but uh would love to meet you at some point in time?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. But.
Speaker 2:I'll definitely have you back, Uh, when your book comes out. Uh, my people with the name of the book's gonna be.
Speaker 3:Sure it's called. This book is cheaper than therapy a no-nonsense guide to improving your mental health.
Speaker 2:And um, if we want to reach you right now, where do we find you?
Speaker 3:Sure um, you can find information about me, about the book on lis kelly amazon, mary ssns and w is in work.
Speaker 2:So lis kelly, mswcom and now we'll be in the show notes so that people can go directly there. And if you want to work with live lis, get her book. Um, they'll all be there and um, I can't tell you how much this hour went by fast.
Speaker 3:I said that hour went by really fast. For sure we need, we definitely have to do this again, because we we could talk for another hour.
Speaker 2:It's always great to get to finally know you, because I feel like I could sit there and talk about shop, talk about life with you for Three hours and I wouldn't see the time but go by, and it's always nice to have people like that in your life. So I appreciate you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I feel the same way. So great to get to connect with you today.
Speaker 2:And we'll say happy holidays to everyone and, uh, we gave you a few tricks and we'll, uh, you'll hear lis again very soon.
Speaker 3:Happy holidays everyone, and be nice to yourself.
Speaker 2:Thanks, lis. Well, this concludes episode 125 with lis kelly. Thank you so much. I can't wait to have you back on. We're gonna promote your book. I can't wait to read it. I know I'm gonna get an advanced copy and look forward to hearing that. But with episode 126, my co-host and she will be hosting finding your way through therapy at times, courtney Romanowski. She will be having a special guest on by the name of audrey albert king. I will be co-hosting that one, but eventually she will be doing it on our own. So can't wait to hear that and I hope to see you then.
Speaker 1:Please like, subscribe and follow this podcast on your favorite platform. A glowing review is always helpful and, as a reminder, this podcast is for informational, educational and entertainment purposes only. If you're struggling with a mental health or substance abuse issue, please reach out to a professional counselor for consultation. If you are in a mental health crisis, call 988 for assistance. This number is available in the united states.